Gregory J. Markopoulos

To celebrate the publication of “Film as Film: The Collected Writings of Gregory J. Markopoulos”, the book’s editor Mark Webber will give an illustrated talk to introduce Markopoulos’ work, his extraordinary writings of cinema, and his landmark film Twice a Man (1963).

In collaboration with UGent - Vakgroep Kunst-, Muziek- en Theaterwetenschappen on the occasion of the course Sleutelmomenten uit de geschiedenis van de experimentele film en videokunst by Prof. Dr. Steven Jacobs.

Don't miss the screenings of Markopoulos’ films at the ÂGE D'OR festival in Brussels. www.cinematek.be

Twice A Man

Gregory J. Markopoulos, Country: US, 1963, 16mm, colour, 48'

Twice A Man is a fragmented re-imagining of the Greek myth of Hippolytus, who was killed after rejecting the advances of his stepmother. Markopoulos’ vision transposes the legend to 1960s New York and has its main character abandon his mother for an elder man. Employing sensuous use of colour, the film radicalised narrative construction with its mosaic of ‘thought images’ that shift tenses and compress time. One of the touchstones of independent filmmaking, Twice A Man was made in the same remarkable milieu as Scorpio Rising and Flaming Creatures by a filmmaker named ‘the American avant-garde cinema’s supreme erotic poet’ by its key critic P. Adams Sitney. (Mark Webber)

Film as Film: The Collected Writings of Gregory J. Markopoulos

Mark Webber, Country: UK, 2014

Film as Film: The Collected Writings of Gregory J. Markopoulos contains some ninety out-of-print or previously unavailable articles by the Greek-American filmmaker who, as a contemporary of Kenneth Anger, Stan Brakhage and Andy Warhol, was at the forefront of a movement that established a truly independent form of cinema. Beginning with his early writings on the American avant-garde and auteurs such as Dreyer, Bresson and Mizoguchi, it also features numerous essays on Markopoulos’ own practice, and on films by Robert Beavers, that were circulated only in journals, self-published editions or programme notes. The texts become increasingly metaphysical and poetic as the filmmaker pursued his ideal of Temenos, an archive and screening space to be located at a remote site in the Peloponnese where his epic final work could be viewed in harmony with the Greek landscape. Gregory J. Markopoulos (1928-1992) is a unique figure in film history, one whose life’s work stands in testament to his strength of vision and commitment to the medium.